Several times recently, I’ve walked into another room, stopped, looked around and said to myself, “Why in the hell am I here?”
I had no clue why I was there. I ended up walking back into the room I was in before, sat down and then remembered why I’d gotten up in the first place.
I realize this is common. People do this all the time. It’s been different lately, though. Before, I’d walk into kitchen, stop, look around, then quickly remember that I was there to grab the ice pack out of the freezer for my achy back. Now, I have to actually leave the room, return to the couch and think about it.
Yes, aging absolutely sucks. And I’m not even going to delve into the aforementioned back pain, largely a result of my own stupidity at the gym. I’ll also spare you the details of how it seems to take more effort and time to actually get up these days. And I’ll just link to my blog about dropping our youngest kid off for her freshman year of college.
I’ve mentioned to my wife and friend Steve many times in the past year how I’ll hear a song or see a movie and think “I loved this in junior high,” then realize that was more than 30 years ago. As music goes, I’m at that age (44 now) where I pretty much hate modern music. I’m not sure I’ve listened to a top 40 song since I actually turned 40 in 2016.
These all seem like the “minor” things that remind us we’re getting older, like yelling at people to “slow down!” as they roar past our house at 70 miles per hour in a residential area. You know, something I know I did when I was in high school.
But this aging thing really didn’t seem like a big deal until the parents of my friends started dying. Sure, there have been a few who lost their mom or dad years ago at a young age, but only a handful.
First, in 2017, Steve, my best friend since the eighth grade, lost his mom. This was a woman I saw as often as my own mother. At that point, my dad was one month into his own battle with cancer.
As horrendously bad as 2020 has been (seriously, who had “unsurvivable storm” on their Bingo card?), it seems like the post-dessert Busch Light to 2019, a year that included the death of my Aunt Ginger, Uncle Wayne and another second mom, Kathy Kessinger.
Meanwhile, my old man’s fight with cancer started to look like the early rounds of Balboa-Drago. He finally lost that battle on Aug. 5, 2019. Watching him struggle and fade for several months made death and aging very real.
A little more than a month later, we lost Larry Smart, a family member on my wife’s side who I’d known for more than 30 years and who not only prepared our taxes, but also scoured our house for any defects before we bought it.
This year, more schoolmates lost their moms and dads. Just a few weeks ago, we lost Betty Crook, a classmate’s mother and incredibly kind soul at the age of 67. As I stood there with my wife and Steve in an odd setting for a funeral with social distancing and masks, I said, “I guess this comes with getting older, but I’m really sick of losing friends and good people.”
Now that I think about it, forgetting why I walked into another room doesn’t seem like a big deal.